Mikhail Gorbachev had faith in socialist ideas, but also enough intelligence to accept that the model created by Lenin and continued by other leaders of the former USSR was misguided because it was entrenched in imposition.
Far from Gorbachev’s pragmatism, Fidel Castro was reluctant to recognize with concrete actions that historical truth, demonstrated by the largest record of crimes that humanity has ever recorded. What always mattered to the commander was power, and although several years later he acknowledged to the U.S. journalist Jeffrey Golddberg that the Cuban model did not work, that was the one endorsed by his brother when he replaced him in power and it is the same one defended by the leaders of the so-called continuity, which is none other than the prolongation of the lack of freedoms and economic failure.
With the disappearance of the USSR, Cuba began the most protracted crisis in its history. Blackouts, sustained inflation, devaluation of the national currency, deterioration of education, health and transport services, lack of food and medicine, and an ostensible decline in sporting success and the credibility of the people in those who lead them without their consent, together with the sustained increase in poverty and repression, are some of the characteristics of this crisis. exacerbated by COVID-19.
The most forceful expression of the popular rejection of the “policy of continuity” proclaimed by Mr. Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez were the massive protests that took place in July 2021 and those that have continued to take place in various parts of the country.
Instead of taking a realistic position and listening to the demands of the people, the Cuban communists systematically apply their policy of state terrorism against all dissent, something that has made Cuba the country with the second highest prison rate in the world, according to Cubanet published on January 26, citing a report by the World Prison Brief website.
Although for more than a decade the plans for the construction of houses, rice production, the sugar, tobacco and coffee harvests, the plans for the production of beef and pork, and those for food, fruits and vegetables have been breached annually, the leaders of the continuity continue to ask the people for resistance and blame the U.S. embargo for the country’s economic situation. Slogans that are inescapable in his speech.
The recent request for help from the United Nations World Food Program – something that the Castro regime has never done in its 65 years – shows how profound the effects of this crisis are.
The dictatorship does not dedicate enough money to the needs of Cubans and that is why it can no longer guarantee even the lousy bread they sell to the people, nor milk for children up to seven years old. Added to this are delays in the distribution of products whose sale is controlled by the ration book.
Instead of deciding to “change everything that needs to be changed,” Cuban communists continue to defend the ineffective and bet on change… of men and of laws.
Some time ago, Marino Murillo Jorge, who created the failed “Ordering Task” and was in charge of the country’s economic policy for more than ten years, was defenestrated. A few days ago, the dictatorship dismissed the ministers of Economy and Food Industry and yesterday, Sunday, March 3, it replaced Rafael Ramón Santiesteban Pozo at the head of the National Association of Small Farmers (ANAP).
It is the opinion of the country’s top leadership that the Cuban peasants are not working well. Recently, Manuel Marrero Cruz, Prime Minister, acknowledged the failure of a law designed “to guarantee food production, promote local, sovereign and sustainable food systems and mobilize the financial and technological resources and alliances that enable the implementation of sovereign and sustainable food systems,” according to a report by Radio Martí Noticias on March 3. The leader was referring to Law No.148 of 2022, “Law on Food Sovereignty and Food and Nutrition Security”, a very long name for very short results.
Recently, the pro-government newspaper Tribuna de La Habana reported that last year state-owned agricultural companies operated at only 30% of their capacity and fulfilled only 66% of the delivery of meat in 2023. “We can’t come and repeat the same thing, that no progress was made, no progress was made… There is a people who are waiting for us,” said Luis Antonio Torres Iribar, first secretary of the PCC in Havana, who also stated that a considerable number of farmland is underutilized and others completely inactive and that, in 2023, in Havana, more cows died than were born and that one of the main causes of those deaths was hunger. In Cuba there is also Law 161 of 2022, “Law for the Promotion and Development of Livestock”, but steak has not yet appeared on the table of Cubans.
For more than ten years, peasants have been demanding profound changes in Cuban agriculture. Freedom for the production and distribution of their products, to set prices according to the market, to import and export directly, as well as the elimination of taxes for ten years on food producers and processors and the granting of property titles to all agricultural producers are some of these demands. according to the same report by Radio Martí Noticias.
And who has the dictatorship now put at the head of the ANAP? Well, none other than Félix Duarte Ortega, who until yesterday, Sunday, was the head of the PCC’s Agri-Food Department! The individual graduated as an Engineer in Mechanization of Agricultural Production but has not practiced the career because he has always been a political leader. He also has a Master’s Degree in Economic and Political Culture, as does the defenestrated Santiesteban Pozo, which could be summed up in this sentence: “Some studies, no results”.
We know that Mr. Félix Duarte Ortega, who is now going to lead the Cuban peasants without ever having worked in the fields, has not been sent to the ANAP to listen to them, but from there he will try to impose the party’s ucases. We also know that it will reap the same response from the same disinterest of the producers and the continuous shortages in the markets.
There is no worse blind man than one who does not want to see.
Roberto de Jesús Quiñones Haces